Friday, February 27, 2009

Would you trust this bowl of spaghetti sauce with your life?

I woke up on Monday, as I often do on Mondays, and noticed an odd smell in my kitchen. A quick search later, I discovered that I had absently-mildly left a bowl of spaghetti sauce in my microwave the night before. Now most normal people would have immediately tossed it out but I hesitated. You see, I put a lot of effort into this sauce. And a lot of organic vegetables from New Seasons. I had planned to make multiple meals out of the contents of that bowl and I wasn't about to just toss it out without first consulting the internet. Surely, there was no way that nasty germs and fungi could have infiltrated both a closed microwave and the Saran Wrap covering the bowl.

Now you might be surprised to learn that there isn't a lot of information out there about this particular dilemma. A Google search didn't turn up much so I turned to Twitter. Four of my online colleagues told me to eat it and, presumably, didn't do so because they wanted me to puke my brains out. One theorized that the tomatoes in the sauce would have essentially pickled the meat and anything else with the potential to go bad. Another told me to make sure I heated it to a certain temperature first.

I tossed the sauce in the freezer, took a chance on it a few nights later and again the following night. So far, I'm not dead and I'm pretty sure I've successfully ducked botulism. My thanks goes out to all those Twitter folks and Paul Newman, RIP, who's stellar spaghetti sauce recipe no doubt prevented me from spending twelve consecutive hours in the bathroom.